[Marxism] Unis’tot’en website

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://unistoten.camp/ 
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[Marxism] NZ junketing journalists were swanning around Israel in midst of new clampdown on Palestinian left

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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In mid-December the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beit, revealed it had
arrested dozens of Palestinian left-wing activists, including members of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the previous
few months.

Among those arrested was one of the central leaders of the PFLP, Khalida
Jarrar.  As well as being a member of the central leadership of the PFLP,
she is a renowned Palestinian feminist and lawmaker.  Comrade Jarrar has
been regularly subject to bogus arrests and administrative detentions –
these give the Israeli state licence to hold people without charge of
trial. . .
full at:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2020/02/19/israel-state-was-cracking-down-on-palestinian-left-as-nz-junketeers-visited-israel/
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[Marxism] "only the billionaires can save us"

[Dayne Goodwin via Marxism]

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Capitalist politics has become a caricature of itself.  "Mike
Bloomberg 2020" campaign advertising received via U.S. mail says: "Get
special interest influence out of politics. Mike never has and never
will take a dime from them."  This is point three on a four-point
platform.

When Ralph Nader ended his relatively brief venture into electoral
politics he wrote a fictional book "Only the Billionaires Can Save Us"
(2010; 2011 title "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us") which i took as
his experienced judgment on the state of U.S. politics.

Working people are constantly dunned for donations by politicians
(typically low-income millionaires) who need our help so they can
compete with the billionaires and billionaire-funded.  If we don't
contribute again and again, it will be our fault that the billionaires
are in control (spoiler alert, they already are).
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[Marxism] Review: Zionist Betrayal of Jews, From Herzl to Netanyahu – New Politics

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://newpol.org/review-zionist-betrayal-of-jews-from-herzl-to-netanyahu/
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[Marxism] Report: The China Question conference | rs21

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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David Brophy reports on The China Question conference in Brooklyn.

https://www.rs21.org.uk/2020/02/18/report-the-china-question-conference/
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Re: [Marxism] Boris Johnson Aide Quits After Furor Over Racial Comments

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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There is absolutely no room for complacency about events in the UK. But
conditions are not yet ready there for fascism. Despite the social media
rhetoric the fact that Sabisky had to step down shows that there Is more
distance to be traveled before we can declare theUK  government a fascist
one. Imagine the laughter if someone had described Goering as a racist. He
was and wore that badge proudly.
My guess is that it will take another acute recession/depression and a
revival of the Left before the ruling elites consider the fascist fall-back
option.

comradely

Gary



On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 3:31 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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> *
>
> NY Times, Feb. 18, 2020
> Boris Johnson Aide Quits After Furor Over Racial Comments
> By Stephen Castle
>
> LONDON — The warning signs may have been there last month when Dominic
> Cummings, the influential and iconoclastic aide to Prime Minister Boris
> Johnson of Britain, invited “weirdos and misfits” to apply to work at
> Downing Street.
>
> On Monday, one new recruit was at the center of a furor over his past
> assertions that blacks have a lower IQ than whites, and that enforced
> contraception could prevent “creating a permanent underclass.”
>
> As the opposition Labour Party demanded the dismissal of the adviser,
> Andrew Sabisky, Downing Street declined all comment. It even managed to
> deepen the dispute by refusing to say that Mr. Johnson rejects eugenics,
> the widely dismissed field whose proponents advocate discouraging
> reproduction by people deemed to have undesirable genetic traits.
>
> Then late Monday, Mr. Sabisky himself announced that he was stepping
> down, complaining of “media hysteria.”
>
> The episode has both shone a light on Mr. Johnson’s leadership team and
> illustrated the sway that Mr. Cummings holds in Downing Street, where he
> cuts a distinctive, scruffy figure and has established himself as one of
> the most powerful and polarizing figures in government.
>
> After winning a big parliamentary majority in elections in December, Mr.
> Johnson’s aides appear to feel little obligation to explain themselves,
> especially to a news media they hold in little regard.
>
> The government is at war with the BBC, boycotting some of its flagship
> broadcasts and threatening its future funding. It has also tried to
> divide and rule among political journalists by offering selected
> reporters briefings from top officials.
>
> The decision to hire Mr. Sabisky, may even so prove damaging for Mr.
> Johnson, in part because he has himself used racist language in his
> writing.
>
> Mr. Johnson is already facing questions over who paid for a £15,000
> winter vacation taken by the prime minister and his partner on the
> island of Mustique in December and early January.
>
> It was as he basked there in the Caribbean sunshine that Mr. Cummings,
> one of the architects of the 2016 Brexit campaign, issued his appeal on
> his blog for “super-talented weirdos” to come and work alongside him at
> Downing Street. The idea was to shake up a cadre of top officials, often
> educated at Oxford or Cambridges, that Mr. Cummings considers complacent.
>
> “We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to
> university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, ” Mr.
> Cummings wrote in a post that prompted applications from, among others,
> Uri Geller, the self-styled magician-psychic famous for bending spoons.
>
> Mr. Geller seems not to have gotten a callback. But Mr. Sabisky, who
> describes himself on Twitter as a “researcher” and “super-forecaster,”
> was hired as an adviser in the prime minister’s office.
>
> Then, over the weekend, reports began to surface about his various
> online postings.
>
> On Mr. Cummings’s blog in 2014, for example, Mr. Sabisky suggested
> forced “universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of
> puberty” for what he called the “underclass.”
>
> “Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue,” Mr. Sabisky wrote.
>
> In a Twitter post last May, he wrote that “women’s sport is more
> comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”
>
> And in a separate blog post, he said that when it came to “intellectual
> disability,” there were greater diagnostic rates for black Americans
> than white ones.
>
> On Monday, Scotland’s first 

[Marxism] From despair to where? Marx, Ecomarxism and Degrowth | Andreas Mayert - Academia.edu

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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From despair to where? Marx, Ecomarxism and Degrowth
Andreas Mayert

In his 200th year of birth, Marx's critique of capitalism has been 
associated with various current problems. It is therefore interesting to 
compare Marx's radical critique of capitalism in the 19th-century with 
contemporary theories that radically question the economic system of the 
21st-century. What do they have in common? What contradictions can be 
found? Is a convergence possible – or is the divisive dominant? The 
critique of the economic system and society by advocates of degrowth is 
particularly suitable for such a comparison, not only because of the 
radical nature of their economic and social concepts, but also because, 
like Marx in his day, they take the view that the current accumulation 
of crisis phenomena could soon create the conditions for a complete 
transformation of society. The present text compares the two lines of 
criticism with a special attention to the interpretation of Marx in 
ecomarxism.


https://www.academia.edu/37568509/From_despair_to_where_Marx_Ecomarxism_and_Degrowth?email_work_card=title
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[Marxism] [UCE] "Productivity. LOL": A carpenter speaks

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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“Productivity lol. Guys are throwing up 60 10′ boards [of sheetrock – about
65 lbs. each] on their own, with no partner. Guys are running through
footage of framing that is robot like. Production is at it’s max my friend.
People can’t push any harder. And to be honest it’s disgusting how hard
they have to push.” So wrote a union carpenter in talking about what it
means to compete with non-union carpenters by being more “productive”

The same way that the union leadership is betraying its own membership
(yes, that's a strong word - "betray"), it is betraying workers - and the
future generations too. And the results are a dismal failure all around.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/02/18/productivity-lol-a-carpenter-speaks/

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] International Days of Action Against Sanctions and Economic War

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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*Sanctions Kill*
https://sanctionskill.org/?fbclid=IwAR2EnxtssRCRk37RjrI2zVEQ6XSyEiw6XrZM8blDxK8ATJfFdkOaPQ2DpO4


*Call to Action for International Days of Action Against  Sanctions and
Economic War**March 13 – 15, 2020*
*Sanctions* *Kill**!*   *Sanctions* *are* *War**!* *End Sanctions Now!*

Sanctions are imposed by the United States and its junior partners against
countries that resist their agendas.  They are a weapon of Economic War,
resulting in chronic shortages of basic necessities, economic dislocation,
chaotic hyperinflation, artificial famines, disease, and poverty.  In every
country, the poorest and the weakest – infants, children, the chronically
ill and the elderly – suffer the worst impact of sanctions.

US imposed sanctions, violate international law and are a tool of regime
change. They impact a third of humanity in 39 countries.  They are a crime
against humanity used, like military intervention, to topple popular
governments and movements.   They provide economic and military support to
pro-US right-wing forces.

The US economic dominance and its +800 military bases worldwide demands all
other countries participate in acts of economic strangulation.  They must
end all normal trade relations, otherwise they risk having Wall Street’s
guns pointed at them.  The banks and financial institutions that are
responsible for the devastation of our communities at home drive the
plunder of countries abroad.

Many organizations have been fighting Sanctions and Economic War for some
time.  NOW is an opportunity to combine efforts to raise consciousness on
this crucial issue.

This broad campaign will include protests and demonstrations, lobbying,
petition drives and all forms of educational efforts.

*As an initial step for this campaign we encourage mobilizations and
educational efforts to be organized for the International Days of Action
against US imposed Sanctions and Economic War on March 13-15.*
*Please add your endorsement and help spread the word.  Endorsement form
here:  https://sanctionskill.org *
JAI
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[Marxism] Submission Moser on Neoliberalism

[Richard Moser via Marxism]

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Dear Marxism list,

I think this will be of interest to your readers.  Here is the link. Am I 
submitting properly?

Rich

https://befreedom.co/2019/01/10/neoliberalism-free-market-fundamentalism-or-corporate-power/
 


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[Marxism] Andrew Sabisky’s job at No 10 shows how mainstream the alt-right has become | Joe Mulhall | Opinion | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/18/andrew-sabisky-job-no-10-alt-right-adviser
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[Marxism] Boris Johnson Aide Quits After Furor Over Racial Comments

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Feb. 18, 2020
Boris Johnson Aide Quits After Furor Over Racial Comments
By Stephen Castle

LONDON — The warning signs may have been there last month when Dominic 
Cummings, the influential and iconoclastic aide to Prime Minister Boris 
Johnson of Britain, invited “weirdos and misfits” to apply to work at 
Downing Street.


On Monday, one new recruit was at the center of a furor over his past 
assertions that blacks have a lower IQ than whites, and that enforced 
contraception could prevent “creating a permanent underclass.”


As the opposition Labour Party demanded the dismissal of the adviser, 
Andrew Sabisky, Downing Street declined all comment. It even managed to 
deepen the dispute by refusing to say that Mr. Johnson rejects eugenics, 
the widely dismissed field whose proponents advocate discouraging 
reproduction by people deemed to have undesirable genetic traits.


Then late Monday, Mr. Sabisky himself announced that he was stepping 
down, complaining of “media hysteria.”


The episode has both shone a light on Mr. Johnson’s leadership team and 
illustrated the sway that Mr. Cummings holds in Downing Street, where he 
cuts a distinctive, scruffy figure and has established himself as one of 
the most powerful and polarizing figures in government.


After winning a big parliamentary majority in elections in December, Mr. 
Johnson’s aides appear to feel little obligation to explain themselves, 
especially to a news media they hold in little regard.


The government is at war with the BBC, boycotting some of its flagship 
broadcasts and threatening its future funding. It has also tried to 
divide and rule among political journalists by offering selected 
reporters briefings from top officials.


The decision to hire Mr. Sabisky, may even so prove damaging for Mr. 
Johnson, in part because he has himself used racist language in his writing.


Mr. Johnson is already facing questions over who paid for a £15,000 
winter vacation taken by the prime minister and his partner on the 
island of Mustique in December and early January.


It was as he basked there in the Caribbean sunshine that Mr. Cummings, 
one of the architects of the 2016 Brexit campaign, issued his appeal on 
his blog for “super-talented weirdos” to come and work alongside him at 
Downing Street. The idea was to shake up a cadre of top officials, often 
educated at Oxford or Cambridges, that Mr. Cummings considers complacent.


“We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to 
university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, ” Mr. 
Cummings wrote in a post that prompted applications from, among others, 
Uri Geller, the self-styled magician-psychic famous for bending spoons.


Mr. Geller seems not to have gotten a callback. But Mr. Sabisky, who 
describes himself on Twitter as a “researcher” and “super-forecaster,” 
was hired as an adviser in the prime minister’s office.


Then, over the weekend, reports began to surface about his various 
online postings.


On Mr. Cummings’s blog in 2014, for example, Mr. Sabisky suggested 
forced “universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of 
puberty” for what he called the “underclass.”


“Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue,” Mr. Sabisky wrote.

In a Twitter post last May, he wrote that “women’s sport is more 
comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”


And in a separate blog post, he said that when it came to “intellectual 
disability,” there were greater diagnostic rates for black Americans 
than white ones.


On Monday, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, appealed to the 
government to “get a grip fast and demonstrate some basic but 
fundamental values.”


And even one Conservative lawmaker, Caroline Nokes, argued that there 
should be no place in government for such views.


It was not just political figures who condemned the remarks. Scientists, 
too, dismissed them as baseless.


In announcing his resignation, Mr. Sabisky said, “The media hysteria 
about my old stuff online is mad” but said he did not want to be “a 
distraction.”


Few mainstream British politicians have dared articulate views like Mr. 
Sabisky’s — at least, in public.


When Keith Joseph, a leading Conservative intellectual and ally of 
Margaret Thatcher’s, argued in 1974 that the country’s “human stock” was 
threatened, the outcry was enough to kill his prospects of leading his 
party. Mrs. Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 and 
then won three elections.


Though some have defended Mr. Sabisky, citing freedom of speech, some in 
the government appeared to be distancing itself from him.


On Sunday, the 

[Marxism] 9 Acquitted in Landmark Trial of Protesters in Turkey

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Feb. 18, 2020
9 Acquitted in Landmark Trial of Protesters in Turkey
By Carlotta Gall

SILIVRI, Turkey — A Turkish court ordered a prominent philanthropist, 
Osman Kavala, acquitted of all charges and released from prison, one of 
several surprising verdicts on Tuesday in an important human rights 
trial that had been widely criticized as unjust.


Sixteen members of Turkish civil society, including Mr. Kavala, had 
faced charges in a case seen as a litmus test of popular opposition to 
the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 
and the tightly controlled justice system.


Nine people in total were acquitted on Tuesday, and arrest warrants were 
lifted for the remaining seven defendants, on the condition that they 
appear in court. They have left the country and will be tried separately.


Charged with trying to overthrow the government by force, the defendants 
faced trial for participating in the 2013 Taksim Square protests, when 
demonstrators occupied Istanbul’s central square to halt the 
construction of a shopping mall in one of the city’s few parks.


The court, packed with friends and supporters of the defendants, erupted 
into applause and cheers at the culmination of a trial that has been 
seen as one of most important in Turkey. Amnesty International, in a 
statement ahead of the trial, said the outcome “will show the rest of 
the world whether respect for human rights has any part to play in the 
Turkish justice system.”


Mr. Kavala, who has been in jail for over two years, faced a life 
sentence in solitary confinement without parole, and was met with 
applause from the public when he was brought into the court. The 
prosecutor had demanded the same “aggravated life” sentence for two more 
defendants, an architect, Mucella Yapici, and a child development 
specialist, Yigit Aksakoglu, and sentences of up to 20 years for others.


Mr. Kavala, 63, entered the courthouse on Tuesday carrying a blue 
plastic bag. He raised his hand acknowledging the applause from the 
public gallery, but did not look around. He stooped slightly to bend 
over the microphone, referring only to a ruling by the European Court of 
Human Rights, which he said had found that there was no reason to 
suspect that he had committed a crime.


The case was part of a yearslong crackdown by the government of 
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after a bloody coup attempt against him 
in 2016. Tens of thousands of people have been detained and put on 
trial, many of them with little connection to the coup.


The defendants in the Taksim Square case were charged in 2018, five 
years after the initial protests. Mr. Erdogan, who personally supported 
the development project, saw the protests as a direct challenge to his 
rule and had them crushed with riot police and tear gas.


But rights organizations have criticized the prosecution as lacking 
solid evidence and using arguments based on conspiracy theories. Ms. 
Yapici, who is a member of Taksim Solidarity, a group that campaigns on 
urban development issues, was acquitted in an earlier trial for her role 
in the protests.


“We have seen this movie before,” one of the defendants, Can Atalay, a 
lawyer and member of Taksim Solidarity, posted on Twitter over the 
weekend. “The evidence is vague, witnesses are controversial, and the 
verdict is pre-ordered. They trashed the law.”


Another defendant, Tayfun Kahraman, who is an urban planner at the 
Istanbul mayor’s office, told an opposition channel, Halk TV, “We are 
prosecuted because we raised the demand of democratic rights.”


“Actually millions of people are on trial today,” he added. “The ones 
who took to the streets in 80 provinces are on trial. Today in Turkey 
democracy is on trial.”


Defense lawyers have protested that they were not given the transcripts 
of phone calls used as evidence in the trial and were not permitted to 
question a prosecution witness.


Hundreds of friends and supporters of the defendants turned out to 
attend the trial, filling first the seats and then the corridors of the 
high security courthouse. Armed paramilitary police officers stood guard 
outside.


The newly elected mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who defeated Mr. 
Erdogan’s candidate in a marathon election battle last year, voiced 
support for the defendants ahead of the trial, saying that he had also 
attended the Taksim Square protests.


The rights organization Amnesty International had accused the Turkish 
government of trying to rush through a verdict to avoid having to 
release Mr. Kavala, after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that 
extended pretrial detention 

[Marxism] Breaking Development ❧ Current Affairs

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Our concept of “development” is destructive and irrational. It must be 
abandoned.


by Samuel Miller McDonald

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/02/breaking-development
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[Marxism] A Legal Lion Lays Down His Gavel With a Ruling of ‘Love, Not Hate’

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Feb. 178, 2020
A Legal Lion Lays Down His Gavel With a Ruling of ‘Love, Not Hate’
By Alan Feuer

For more than half a century, Judge Jack B. Weinstein was the 
quintessential activist jurist, using his longtime perch on the federal 
bench in Brooklyn to champion causes like gun control and school 
desegregation. In his career — one of the longest in American legal 
history — he carved out a niche as both a liberal hero and, not 
surprisingly, a bane for conservatives.


Last week, at age 98, Judge Weinstein announced his retirement, saying 
he no longer had the stamina to perform his daily duties. In an 
interview with The New York Times, he looked back over a tenure so 
packed with accolades that his résumé now runs to more than 70 pages. He 
said his unremitting hope and faith in the judicial system remained 
intact even in the current polarized political climate.


“I’m convinced our country is bound to equalize, democratize and to save 
with love, not hate,” he said.


Born in Kansas in 1921, Judge Weinstein earned his law degree in 1948 
from Columbia University after playing bit parts on Broadway and serving 
as a submarine officer in the Pacific theater during World War II.


In his early years as a lawyer, he helped write legal briefs in the 
landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education. After he was 
named to the bench in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, he presided 
over groundbreaking mass tort cases involving the use of asbestos and 
the Vietnam-era defoliant Agent Orange.


At the height of his career, Judge Weinstein, who is known for his 
impressive eyebrows and his iconoclastic temperament, handled several 
high-profile Mafia cases, including the prosecution of Vincent Gigante, 
known as the Chin, the former boss of the Genovese crime family. A 
stickler for propriety, Judge Weinstein once ordered the mob don, famous 
for dressing in his bathrobe, to shower and spruce up when he came to court.


In the past decade, Judge Weinstein turned his attention even further 
toward legal changes, publicly calling for more female lawyers to have 
speaking roles in court and decrying the “lack of sentencing 
alternatives” for violent young criminals who, he said, are often 
written off as “society’s unredeemables.” He has also tackled the 
endemic problem of police officers lying on the witness stand.


Why retire now?

I’ve decided I’ve exhausted my extra store of energy, and I really can’t 
undertake any cases with the promise that I’ll have enough energy, 
physical energy, to hear them appropriately. The last thing I would want 
to do was take new cases and not be able to give them adequate attention.


How would you like to see your legacy described?

I would like to be remembered for trying to work with individuals to 
help them avoid the life-killing environment of prisons and to save them 
for a life with relatives and friends, with a job, and with the 
opportunity to lead a lawful life. Partly by reducing sentences to the 
extent possible, partly by reducing supervised release and partly by 
getting them out into the real world. It’s on a one-to-one basis that I 
see myself operating — the judge to the individual defendant.


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What about recent reforms to the criminal justice system?

Individual judges can accomplish more with the aid of our pretrial and 
post-trial supervision, a shortening of the period needed to integrate 
people back into society. In my case, I can do it just by shortening 
sentences. That’s the quickest way to shorten the amount of excessive 
time we use for incarceration.


Sentencing reform has been a focus of yours for a long time, no?

From the outset. I was born in a period just after World War I in an 
area right outside one of the Wichita Indian settlements. And I saw a 
lot of terrible things during the Depression. People sleeping in parks 
and on the streets. And when I came back from the war, during that 
postwar period, we did a great deal to equalize opportunities for women, 
African-Americans, Jews and a lot of discriminated-against people. And 
our equalization rate went way up. Now it’s starting to crash. But I’m 
convinced our country is bound to equalize, democratize and to save with 
love, not hate.


Why are you so convinced about that trajectory?

We’ve come so far toward equalization. The country has changed so 
enormously for 

[Marxism] (30) Venezuelans Under Siege / Venezuela frente las sanciones - YouTube

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[Marxism] I loosened my hijab at a chess championship. Now I’m afraid to return to Iran.

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Washington Post, Feb. 18, 2020
I loosened my hijab at a chess championship. Now I’m afraid to return to 
Iran.

By Shohreh Bayat

Shohreh Bayat is an arbiter for the International Chess Federation.

Religious indoctrination starts early in Iran, when you are forced at 
school to learn the Koran. I was a dutiful student, praying assiduously 
while wearing a loose, ugly school uniform, with my hair hidden under a 
big scarf. At age 8, I even won a prize for fasting.


At 9, I was introduced by my father to the beautiful game of chess, 
beloved by ancient Persian poets. Chess requires logic and critical 
thinking — not faith. Slowly, in my teens, I began to question why, if 
God is fair, is there so much pain and suffering in the world?


Even if my faith was fading, as a woman in Iran I had no choice but to 
tolerate the hijab — the Islamic emblem of constant, misogynistic 
oppression. I avoided looking at myself in mirrors. Wearing the 
head-covering was torment enough. When traveling abroad for chess 
tournaments, I admired the young women from other countries who wore 
nice clothes, their hair beautifully styled. I gradually began to spend 
more time in front of the mirror, trying to find ways, within the 
confines of my fabric prison, to appear normal.


Whenever I went abroad, I would make small changes in my appearance, 
perhaps by showing more hair than previously, even if I was careful to 
keep a portion of it concealed. Eventually, I gained a degree of renown 
as an international chess arbiter, working at tournaments around the 
world. I slowly became braver in loosening my hijab on those trips.


In 2017, I was honored to be the first woman ever appointed general 
secretary of a sports federation in Iran. But holding the position meant 
also enduring continual harassment by Iranian Chess Federation officials 
about the hijab. The next year, I resigned in frustration.


That didn’t end the conflicts over the hijab. I continued to travel as 
an arbiter for the International Chess Federation and was pleased to be 
chosen for the Women’s World Chess Championship 2020. When packing to 
travel to Shanghai for the first leg of the championship last month, I 
included several colorful scarves, which was the most daring I could be 
within the confines of Iranian law.


After the first round in Shanghai, I received a message from the Iranian 
Chess Federation asking me to send a “good” photograph from the 
competition. Translation: Photos that I appeared in on foreign websites 
were not hijabi enough for the federation to post on the messaging app 
Telegram in Iran. The loose scarf I wore was actually quite acceptable 
by Iranian standards, but more is demanded of public figures. 
Infuriated, like millions of Iranian women who hate the hijab, I said it 
was the best I could do.


I resolved to wear a “worse” hijab the next day, suspecting that the 
officials would decide that the first-round photo was “good” enough. I 
had no idea how this decision would change my life.


As anticipated, the photo from the first day appeared belatedly on 
Telegram. I had no idea anything was amiss until after the third round, 
when I went back to the hotel, turned on my smartphone and was stunned 
to see that it was teeming with messages. Some had stark warnings: 
“Don’t come back, they will arrest you.” Others included screenshots of 
Iranian media alleging that I hadn’t worn a hijab at all — the photo 
failed to convey that I did indeed wear one, albeit loosely — and, 
worse, had committed the outrage on the anniversary of some protest (the 
date of which I was unaware).


Publicly, the president of the Iranian Chess Federation said that my 
participation in the event had nothing to do with him. Privately, he 
sent messages telling me to write an open letter supporting the hijab. 
Meanwhile, my harmless photo from the first round was purged from 
Telegram, which in Iran is heavily monitored by the government.


How could I write a letter proclaiming what I don’t believe? Was it not 
humiliating enough that I had had to endure this detestable scarf on my 
head every day? The pain was enormous, the tears endless.


The next day, condemned already, I left the scarf behind and entered the 
world with determination and satisfaction. The Iranian media reported, 
without evidence, that I had applied for asylum. (No country was named.) 
I was still at the tournament, with weeks to go, and had a return ticket 
to Tehran. I wanted to go home, but by now it was too dangerous.


As I write to you, I am in Britain — a lovely country, where I have 
received much kindness and generosity from the chess community. I don’t 

[Marxism] LEAK: Secret Documents Show How China Targets Muslims for 'Re-Education' Camps — and Spies on Their Families - VICE

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[Marxism] The Wet’suwet’en Take Another Anti-Pipeline Struggle Mainstream | The New Republic

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[Marxism] NEW BOOKLET Racism, Anti-Semitism and Zionism

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Racism, Anti-Semitism and Zionism

On the oppression of North American Indians, Afro-Americans, Muslims and 
Jews in history and present


This bookhlet has been written by Yossi Schwartz, a long-standing 
activist against Zionism and for the rights of the Palestinian people 
living in Israel / Occupied Palestine. The pamphlet contains an six 
Chapters (see Contents below). It can be read online or downloaded as a 
PDF at this link:


https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/racism-anti-semitism-and-zionism/

* * * * *

Contents of Pamphlet

I. What is Racism?

The roots of racism

II. The Extermination of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

Indian Victories

Anti-Indian Racism Today

Indians and Zionist

III. Black Slavery

Slave Rebellions

Jews and Black Slavery

IV. Anti-Semitism in Slave Society and Feudalism

The new Anti-Semitism between the later part of the 19th century and 
World War 2


Anti-Semitism in the US

World War 2

V. Islamophobia

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in France

Zionism as Racism

Anti-Semitism Today

Israel and Iran

VI. Conclusion


--
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
ak...@rkob.net
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

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